We’re pleased to post more stunning photographs from Shelby Brakken. Husband and wife team Mike and Lucrecia and their pets are the subjects of the third Faces of Independence Northwest photo session. Keep an eye out for more images from this beautiful session soon!

Oregonians with developmental disabilities face serious service cuts in the coming year including, but not limited to:

Complete loss of Brokerage services for people not on Medicaid

Complete loss of Day Program services statewide for people in comprehensive services; agencies providing these services may no longer be able to provide services to brokerage customers as a result

An 80% reduction in total Brokerage support dollars for customers between the ages of 18 and 21 (reduction to just $300 per month in services.)

About the Project

The goal of the Dear Legislator Project is to connect people with developmental disabilities and their advocates with their local legislators via video postcards.

We all know getting to Salem and talking to legislators can be a tall order. Our hope is that this will prove to be a more accessible way of getting you and your concerns heard by your local legislator. Dear Legislator is a website that will host videos of Oregonians with disabilities, their families and their support providers. Video postcards will be available on the website, on Facebook and will be mailed directly to your local legislator!

How You Can Participate

You have a couple of options:

You can come to Independence Northwest on one of our scheduled video days and we’ll record your video and upload/distribute it for you.

You can upload your own video and submit it for the site and distribution.

Once your video is up, share it with everyone you know and spread the word! The more participants, the louder our voice!

Anyone who is concerned about Oregonians with developmental disabilities and their services!

Questions?

Email Larry Deal at Independence Northwest at larry.deal(at)independencenw.org. You can send your video links to that email address as well. Thanks for participating. Your efforts will make a big difference!

Independence Northwest celebrated its fourth year as an Oregon nonprofit just this past December. We’ll celebrate our fourth year as a support services brokerage this summer. In recognition, we recently contracted withShelby Brakken, an extraordinarily talented PDX photographer, to create portraits of some of our customers for use on our office walls, our website and promotional materials.

Our second subject was David. He and his Personal Agent headed out into the city with Shelby and here are the great images they came back with.